Um sistema programavel de aquisição de dados meteorologicos

Orientador : Nelson Castro MachadoDissertação (mestrado) - Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Instituto de Matematica, Estatistica e Ciencia da ComputaçãoResumo: O presente trabalho descreve o projeto e implementação do software de um sistema programável para aquisição de dados meteorológicos. O sistema consiste de uma estação base e uma estação de campo. Na estação base o meteorologista utiliza um microcomputador convencional e dispõe de uma linguagem para aquisição de dados meteorológicos (LADAN), através do qual pode programar seus experimentos. A interface da estaca base com a estação de campo é feita através de um cartucho de memória RAM CMOS com um sistema de "back-up" de bateria, formando um sistema não volátil. O conteúdo inicial do cartucho é o código intermediário correspondente ao experimento programado. A estação de campo possui um interpretador que é capaz de executar os experimentos programados na estação base de acordo com o conteúdo do cartucho, gravando os dados coletados no próprio cartucho. Após encerrada a coleta de dados, o cartucho é novamente levado à estação base onde os dados são transferidos para arquivos em discos, a partir dos quais o usuário poderá analisa-los utilizando pacotes comerciais ou programas de aplicação em qualquer linguagem de alto-nívelAbstract: This work describes the software design and implementation of a Meteorological Data Acquisition System. The system consists of a base station and a remote station. In the base station, the meteorologist uses a conventional microcomputer and is provided with a Meteorological Data Acquisition language (LADAM), which enables him to program the desired experiments. The interface between the base station and the remote station is accomplished with a RAM CMOS cartridge with battery back-up, which constitutes a non-volatile system. The initial cartridge contents is an intermediate code corresponding to the programmed experiment. The remote station has an interpreter which is able to execute the experiments programmed in the base station, according to the contents of the cartridge. When the data collection is collection is completed, the cartridge is brought back to the base station, where the data is transferred to disk files. These serve as input to program packages or custom written programs in any high level language which performs the data analysisMestradoMestre em Ciência da Computaçã

Towards the development of open educational resources: challenges and issues

he fast evolution of the Internet and the Information and Communication Technologies has leveraged and multiplied the possibilities of learning. Additionally, the advent of free and open software has also motivated research and development in the education area. As a result, there has been a change in the way that educational resources are designed, developed and delivered to learners. The term Open Educational Resources (OERs) has emerged as an attempt to standardize the educational content available in a free and open way through the Internet. The establishment and adoption of innovative processes, methods and tools for creating well-designed and highly flexible OERs are challenging for the scientific community in general and, especially, for software engineers. Indeed, Software Engineering practices and principles should be reviewed, updated and adapted for adequately deal with the developmental aspects and needs in this emerging scenario. Having this goal in mind, in this paper we identify some challenges and issues to be considered by software engineers in order to provide an adequate and efficient infrastructure to the development and adoption of OERs

A component-based product line architecture for workflow management systems

This paper presents a component-based product line for workflow management systems. The process followed to design the product line was based on the Catalysis method. Extensions were made to represent variability across the process. The domain of workflow management systems has been shown to be appropriate to the application of the product line approach as there are a standard architecture and models established by a regulatory board, the Workflow Management Coalition. In addition, there is a demand for similar workflow management systems but with some different features. The product line architecture was evaluated with Rapide simulation tools. The evaluation was based on selected scenarios, thus, avoiding implementation issues. The strategy that has been used to populate the architecture and experiment with the product line is shown. In particular, the design of the workflow execution manager component is described

Learning design for software engineering courses

This paper presents a customization of a learning design approach, OULDI, to designing and implementing Software Engineering courses. We propose an iterative process for the application of the OULDI views. This process starts with a course map view and follows a series of steps that ends with the evaluation of the design reflecting on the balance of the proposed activities. A case study is presented in which two institutions were involved in the design and implementation of an experimental software engineering course. Feedback from students, designers and lecturers was collected to support the validation of the design and implementation of the course. This showed that learning design, with the process proposed here, is a feasible approach for the design of software engineering courses

Systematic evaluation of software product line architectures

The architecture of a software product line is one of its most important artifacts as it represents an abstraction of the products that can be generated. It is crucial to evaluate the quality attributes of a product line architecture in order to: increase the productivity of the product line process and the quality of the products; provide a means to understand the potential behavior of the products and, consequently, decrease their time to market; and, improve the handling of the product line variability. The evaluation of product line architecture can serve as a basis to analyze the managerial and economical values of a product line for software managers and architects. Most of the current research on the evaluation of product line architecture does not take into account metrics directly obtained from UML models and their variabilities; the metrics used instead are difficult to be applied in general and to be used for quantitative analysis. This paper presents a Systematic Evaluation Method for UML-based Software Product Line Architecture, the SystEM-PLA. SystEM-PLA differs from current research as it provides stakeholders with a means to: (i) estimate and analyze potential products; (ii) use predefined basic UML-based metrics to compose quality attribute metrics; (iii) perform feasibility and trade-off analysis of a product line architecture with respect to its quality attributes; and, (iv) make the evaluation of product line architecture more flexible. An example using the SEI’s Arcade Game Maker (AGM) product line is presented as a proof of concept, illustrating SystEM-PLA activities. Metrics for complexity and extensibility quality attributes are defined and used to perform a trade-off analysis

A product line for workflow management systems

This paper presents an ongoing research on the development of a component-based product line architecture for workflow management systems. The research includes a process to design the proposed product line, the population of the product with components, the product member production process, architecture evaluation mechanisms using architecture description languages and support tools, a variability management process and the development of case studies to evaluate each proposed technique

Inter-organizational negotiation of web-services

The web service technology allows organizations to interact through business processes. \ud However, organizations involved in cooperative business processes have different interests \ud and points of view. A negotiation allows them to discuss their interests and requirements in \ud order to reach an acceptable agreement. We propose an integrated web service negotiation \ud process that takes into account human interaction and the use of different negotiation \ud protocols. It focuses on the application of feature modelling to describe the negotiated \ud services. Our contributions include: (i) the definition of a negotiation process; (ii) the \ud definition of a conceptual model to support the negotiation of web services; (iii) reuse of \ud artefacts generated throughout the negotiation process; (iv) coverage of critical elements in \ud the negotiation of electronic contracts, such as role, properties of electronic services and \ud contract models; and (v) exploration of the process in different application scenario

O Estabelecimento de Contratos Eletrônicos com o Ambiente FeatureContract

Contratos eletrônicos descrevem termos relacionados a processos denegócio usados para o consumo e o fornecimento de servicos Web. Modelos de características são usados para explorar propriedades comuns e variabilidades no contexto de linha de produto de software. Contudo, modelos de características também podem ser aplicados no estabelecimento de contratos eletrônicos visando o reuso e a melhor estruturacão de suas secões, incluindo os atributos de qualidade de serviço (QoS). O ambiente FeatureContract oferece apoio automatizado a elaboracao de moldes e instâncias de contratos eletrônicos usando modelos de características em conjunto com as linguagens WSDL, WS-Agreement e WS-BPEL

Discovering interesting knowledge from a science & technology database with a genetic algorithm

Data mining consists of extracting interesting knowledge from data. This paper addresses the discovery of knowledge in the form of prediction IF-THEN rules, which are a popular form of knowledge representation in data mining. In this context, we propose a genetic algorithm (GA) designed specifically to discover interesting fuzzy prediction rules. The GA searches for prediction rules that are interesting in the sense of being new and surprising for the user. This is done adapting a technique little exploited in the literature, which is based on user-defined general impressions (subjective knowledge). More precisely, a prediction rule is considered interesting (or surprising) to the extent that it represents knowledge that not only was previously unknown by the user but also contradicts his original believes. In addition, the use of fuzzy logic helps to improve the comprehensibility of the rules discovered by the GA. This is due to the use of linguistic terms that are natural for the user. A prototype was implemented and applied to a real-world science & technology database, containing data about the scientific production of researchers. The GA implemented in this prototype was evaluated by comparing it with the J4.8 algorithm, a variant of the well-known C4.5 algorithm. Experiments were carried out to evaluate both the predictive accuracy and the degree of interestingness (or surprisingness) of the rules discovered by both algorithms. The predictive accuracy obtained by the proposed GA was similar to the one obtained by J4.8, but the former, in general, discovered rules with fewer conditions. In addition it works with natural linguistic terms, which leads to the discovery of more comprehensible knowledge. The rules discovered by the proposed GA and the best rules discovered by J4.8 were shown to a user (a University Director) in an interview who evaluated the degree of interestingness (surprisingness) of the rules to him. In general the user considered the rules discovered by the GA much more interesting than the rules discovered by J4.8

Computing postgraduate programmes in the UK and Brazil: learning from experience in distance education

Education can benefit from experiences and collaborations across different countries and cultures. The authors carried out a study to analyse the experiences of the use of Web 2.0 tools in distance education in the UK and propose a set of lessons that can be applied in the Brazilian context. The recent economic growth in Brazil has resulted in a strong demand for further education. Distance education has emerged as a strong contestant to address this demand. The authors present, in this chapter, the case of the provision of postgraduate education for professionals at a distance. Distance education in Brazil is currently gathering support as it offers great potential to address the big geographic and social divides. However, there are many barriers and misconceptions that perpetuate a climate of distrust. Their study draws a set of lessons learned focusing on the benefits that distance education can bring to the development of professional postgraduate education in technical and engineering areas, in the light of the experience of The Open University (OU) in the UK. They emphasise the support that Web 2.0 can bring to these experiences, but also draw attention to the quality that the production process plays in the learning experiences. These lessons address the following: support for skills development with Web 2.0 technologies, the role of the digital educator, open educational resources, open education and social dimension, and quality and pedagogy in the educational process